Karen Says No – To A Pet Goat

We are cat people. We have two, though the second was “gifted” upon us by my eldest who couldn’t keep a cat anymore due to living situations and a housemate with a large dog. Note: His situation has improved twice since the “gifting” yet the cat remains. We have reminded him of this as recently as last evening. Sigh. Fat Cat is here to stay I guess. As I was saying, we are cat people, not dog people. We like clean self reliant beasts in our home. Clean the cat-box every so often (more if the furnace guy is coming to do annual maintenance), feed them, let them sleep on your legs, let them out then back in four hundred times a day. Easy. We couldn’t stand the smell of a dog or the constant need for friendly socialization or walking the thing every few hours. Hence, cats.

My wife is firmly against any more pets, mostly due to some immature pet rearing and cleaning my my eldest (and myself) about 20 years ago. The only recent other pets we had were two finches (then one after the jilted male murdered his mate) and very recently a brood of triops. Nasty looking primordial creatures in a small bowl in the bathroom window that seem to be a cross between a horseshoe crab and a face-hugger from alien. My wife allows these as they are self contained and don’t need to be walked.

A Triop (not a goat or cat)

So, for some reason, temporary insanity most likely, I asked Karen (She who must be obeyed) if perhaps I could have a pet goat. A small one. A miniature one. You can guess the answer. Granted it was followed by a perfectly logical “Not a chance. Who would end up having to clean up after it? You, not me. You don’t even like cleaning the cat boxes which you should clean once a DAY not once a week! No, no goat!”

Being honest and truthful and lacking some of that animal compassion that poor people with seventeen kids and pets combined have, I tried with “if we got sick of it, we could just eat it.”

More no’s followed.

I briefly thought about bringing up her plan for us to have chickens for “such wonderful eggs!” but held back as I remembered my response when she brought it up as a plan was something like: “Not a chance. Who would end up having to clean up after it? Me, not you. I don’t even like cleaning the cat boxes which should probably be cleaned once a DAY not once a week! No, no chickens!”

She has a point.

But it didn’t stop me from imitating goats screaming like humans for a few minutes as I made my morning tea.